The holiday week in early July found me on several short excursions. A trip to Lurvey Falls near the end of the Perseverance Trail was particularly rewarding for an old dipper-watcher and companions. As we approached one of the wooden bridges in the upper basin, we noticed a young dipper perched on the edge of the planks. So we stopped and “froze.” Pretty soon the juvenile was pecking at the surface of the boards, poking down in the cracks between the boards, and being quite successful at finding little edibles — and discarding a few inedibles. It foraged this way for some minutes.

Then it hopped up on the bridge railing, picking up tiny things as it moved along. Gradually, it got closer and closer to us, until it was right next to me, just below my hand — and it nabbed a bug off my jacket before leisurely hopping back along the railing. What fun!

We think we found its parents a little way upstream, carrying beakfuls of bugs in both directions, up and down the creek. They appeared to have fledglings scattered all along the creek, and our insouciant juvenile was probably one of them.

A walk on the Mendenhall Wetland State Game Refuge at the end of Industrial Boulevard brought me into “sparrow-city.” Song sparrows lived in the very brushy zone of alders and willows. As the thickets became sparse and mixed with grasses and herbs, I found a few Lincoln’s sparrows. Out in the open meadows, there were dozens of savanna sparrows, some singing and others with beaks full of green caterpillars and long-legged crane flies for their chicks.

Nest boxes on stakes were occupied by tree swallows. As I walked on the trail past one box, an agitated adult swallow dove close to me head repeatedly, until I moved along a sufficient distance from its nest. Another box seemed to have produced some fledglings that did not venture very far away and were actively tended by busy adults.

Some of the old, upturned snags and stumps scattered around the meadow are pieces of sculpture, if you take time to look. Beautifully curved roots, almost muscular-looking, once held those trees in the ground. Now they support mosses and lichens, and lots of tiny red mites.

My home pond has hosted at least three broods of mallards, all of different ages. Only two juveniles were left in the oldest brood, now almost as big as mom, with bodies well-feathered but wings still too short for flight. Five downy, middle-sized ducklings were just getting real feathers. And a brood of seven tiny fluff-balls arrived with their very vigilant mother. On most days, only one family used the pond at a given time, and if there was a brief temporal overlap, the females kept the broods well apart.

As usual, visits to the glacier area provided entertainment. The terns had gone, but barn swallows were nesting in the pavilion and exercising mosquito control in long, graceful swoops. A brood of mergansers rested, with mom, on a rock. A downy Barrow’s goldeneye duckling foraged alone for days, no family in sight, but apparently doing well for itself. A myrtle warbler (a.k.a. yellow-rumped warbler, a.k.a. butter-butt) flitted along the roof edge of the pavilion, gleaning insects. One aerobatic warbler chased flying insects high above the pond made (but no longer occupied) by beavers; it flew so high that it was just an animated black spot, diving, circling, climbing and looping.

An adult black bear had climbed to the very top of a cottonwood tree. There it chewed through several inches of wood, causing the tip of the tree’s trunk to fall. The bear caught the falling piece and promptly ate the seed pods. Then it moved down to a sizable side branch. Planting its rump firmly in the junction of branch and trunk, it started to chew off the branch. Deciding, apparently, that this part of the branch was too thick, it reached out another foot or so, and chewed again, but briefly. Again, not satisfactory. So, stretching out as slender as a big bear can get, and balancing well along the branch, it gnawed through the branch at a thinner place, brought it down, and again gobbled up the seed pods. The top of the tree was a wreck, and the bear slid down and wandered off into the woods. Watching the antics of bears in the trees can be as much fun as watching them in the creek later in the season when the fish arrive.